Friday, November 16, 2007

If you’ve been thinking of adding Soil Builder from the Davenport Compost Facility, you may want to think again. Because of the words compost, earth cycle, beneficial composted soil amendments, it leads one to believe that the product is organic. It is not.

Garden Clipping

Promoted as a great way to dispose of treated waste, the sewage sludge sold to homeowners to spray on their lawns and gardens may also be adding drugs, flame retardants and other chemicals to the landscape.

Chad Kinney, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Eastern Washington University, found dozens of medicinal, industrial and household compounds in treated sewage sludge, also known as biosolids, that government agencies sell as lawn-and-garden enhancements.

full story

A few years ago we were convinced by friends to add the soil builder to our gardens. We didn’t add them to the food portion of our yard but did apply bags of it to our perennial beds. It appeared that the plants seemed to thrive, of course I didn’t have areas of other flowers to compare them too. Now we are finding that we are hard pressed to find one earthworm in the amended areas. Coincidence? I don’t know but we have started working our own compost back into the gardens. It might take longer but at least we know what is in our soil.